Radical sympathies

I27

My perspective has been coming from a radical, egalitarian position. I know that there are many different points one can attack something [from], but the point is to draw the links between those things….So yeah, I have an anarchist-communist outlook, that doesn't mean I'm not sympathetic to other things and other perspectives.

Radical values

I6

I don't want to point to a specific example of an activist initiative and say that this is the guide to the future. My own feeling is that there are values that I think I'd like to see broadened to be values that people can work with. Things like solidarity, affinity, autonomy, cooperation over competition, these sorts of vague themes. And then there are various experiments with those which are sometimes inspiring, like cooperatives. Those sorts of things have those values in them.

Building commonality

I1

I [found] myself spending more and more of my time on issues I was seeing [around me]....I saw tenant organizing in a similar way that I see union organizing: it's a way to actually build commonality.

Practicing solidarity

I1

In the ‘80s and ‘90s, it was a debate around mass organizing versus propaganda of the deed and that was the way it was framed….I recall those debates throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s and I recall really sharply [that] the spokescouncil meetings leading up to the WTO in Seattle gathered different communities from the Pacific North-West, from Washington state, or Oregon, or BC and [they advanced] very different approaches. By that time, we had developed a fair amount of respect for each other...[and] many of those debates were had in pretty fraternal ways and played out better than maybe they have most recently.

Hope in the dark

I4

There's always going to be that kernel of good possibilities and I think it's going to be a lot harder for rich people to keep in this bubble that we're in right now which is not having to realize the incredible poverty and the incredible suffering going on in the rest of the world. Especially as climate change refugees start to come to North America. And as stuff in North America starts to get flooded and in Europe, so that part to me is hopeful. Unfortunately it's going to come with a lot of shit and we're probably going to end up killing a lot of people and I also think that neoliberalism cannot exist in that future, in that vision of the future, because something as powerful as the state might not be able to exist except through a huge amount of coercion or totalitarianism.

No going back

I27

I always think it's really exciting when people...move...and I think that the key thing…[is] not necessarily to take them and show them exactly what to do, but [to show them] there's no going back. They're either going to win or they're going to fucking lose and I think that's an important position. To push people out to taking those risks that they wouldn't normally want to take and getting them to feel like that's their decision, feeling empowered, and then creating that contrast, and then there's no going back, you're pretty much taking a leap.

Anarchism and radical social change

I12

Eventually I came to [anarchism]... and a complete rejection of the entire system and seeing its destruction as the only possible solution. It didn't seem like it was hierarchical in any way. It didn't seem to be intimidating in the sense that you had to prove yourself to be a part of it or climb any kind of ranks or whatever, or find a place to be. You were just an individual making your own decisions and individual actions for what you saw as a potential for change.

Imagining alternatives

I10

It's easy to be angry, and rant, and say the things that you don't agree with but when [do] you take the next step of, okay, how can we build something new? How can we build something better? How can we go forward? That's when the imagination is the most important because the imagination, it allows you to maybe think of something in a way that you've never thought of before.

Managing dissent

I7

I think there's something to be said for keeping our internal struggles internal. Stephen Harper does that really well and that's not say again that we need to become authoritarian or hierarchical. It's just to say that if we're going to argue about whether we're libertarian or communist or something else we should not argue about that in the Chronicle Herald. We should not split our broader leftist movement apart publicly.

Electoral politics and lived realities

I21

I believe in a diversity of tactics. I believe that electoral politics is necessary. I hate it….So even when I thought it was the right thing to do I hated it. I do not like electoral politics but I consider electoral politics to be important particularly given the fact that as the left we're so fucking weak. So to me it's an arrogant position to dismiss electoral politics because what it does is to dismiss the day-to-day lives of working people and poor people.